The present invention relates to a method according to the preamble of claim 1.
The method to which the invention relates is used to control calls in a distributed call center or in a virtual PBX (Private Branch Exhange).
A distributed call center means a call center, the telephone connections of which can be located in several different telephone exchanges, for example, indifferent parts of the country. A call made to a telephone number of a distributed call center is directed to one of the connections belonging to the call center. A distributed call center is very suitable, for example, for implementing help-desk services, as those who clan be contacted at the telephone number of the call center can work at home and experts in different localities can be gathered in the call center.
In turn, a virtual PBX refers to an arrangement, in which the telephone connections connected under the virtual PBX are controlled in the same way as a conventional PBX controls its extension numbers. A functioning virtual PBX permits, for example, the telephone lines and mobile phone connections of the various units of a large company to be controlled from a single service point, making it easier to contact the employees. A customer calling the company""s number would then have a better chance of contacting the person he or she wants to or his or her deputy, irrespective of which unit the person is working in at that precise moment. It would also be possible to inform the caller immediately, if the person he or she is trying to contact is not available.
According to the state of the art, a distributed call center land virtual PBX are implemented by exploiting the normal call setup signaling of a telephone network. In this case, when contact is attempted, the state of a telephone connection forming part of a call center or virtual PBX is checked, by making a call attempt to the connection in question and checking whether it is busy or whether it replies. Thus, the check is made by attempting to connect the incoming call. In the case of a distributed call center, for example, this generally means several consecutive call attempts to different connections in the call center, to find an idle connection. In a distributed call center, an available connection is sought according to a predetermined search sequence cannot be altered in real-time, according to the state of the connections of the call center. The connections of exchanges connected by ISDN signalling can also use the so-called CCBS (Completion of Calls to Busy Subscribers) supplementary service, which permits intelligent call queuing between two individual connections.
A drawback in the state of the art is that, when a call attempt is made to a connection, the control point does not know the state of the connection. This leads to a situation, in which, when an available connection is being sought, the call attempt may be often made first to a destination number, which is busy. Unsuccessful call attempts to busy connections occupy the capacity of the telephone network, often slowing the call routing to the desired person or his or her deputy.
The invention is intended to eliminate the defects of the art disclosed above and create an entirely new type of method for implementing a virtual PBX or distributed call center.
The invention is based on recording, in a database, the information on the state of the connections controlled by a virtual PBX or distributed call center, which database is updated whenever the state of any controlled connection at all changes or is changed. The invention is also based on the fact that at least call attempts, which are made to connections controlled by a virtual PBX or distributed call center, are processed on the basis of the information available from the database. In certain embodiments of the virtual PBX, this may mean that, when a call attempt is received, either from an external telephone network or from a connection it controls, the virtual PBX checks the state of the connection and possibly other parameters, such as call barring, from the database and decides on how to route the call on this basis. Some embodiment of a distributed call center may, in for its part, route the calls on the basis of the database information, for example, to that connection of the call center that has been available for the longest time.
More specifically, the method according to the invention is characterized by what is stated in the characterizing section of claim 1.
Considerable advantages are gained with the aid of the invention.
The invention reduces the load on the telephone network, because call attempts need not be placed unnecessarily to connections that may be even far away, only to discover that they are busy.
There are embodiments of the invention that permit the flexible and dynamic operation of connections belonging to a distributed call center. Connections can then freely log in to the call center or log out from the call center, they can detach from it for a certain time, they can have necessary recovery times or they can make outbound calls, without interfering with the control of incoming telephone traffic to the call center.
The invention also has preferred embodiments, by means of which the operator of a virtual PBX can control the traffic coming to the connections of the virtual PBX in an entirely new way. In this case, calls are not directed unnecessarily to busy connections or voice mail. If the called number has activated a call diversion to a mobile phone, the PBX operator knows this and can act accordingly. In these preferred embodiments, the absences and business trips of persons being called do not cause unnecessary call attempts to their connections, instead the caller can be requested immediately to leave a message in the voice mail, with a secretary or with the deputy of the person called.
Some particularly preferred embodiments of the invention can also be used to expedite the accessibility of a person being called, for example, by using the information in the database to first try to route the calls being made to the person""s extention, to the connection last used by the person. Other advanced paging routines can also preferably be linked to embodiments of the invention, such as a routine that searches for that connection in the distributed call center that has been idle for the longest time and then routes the incoming call to that connection.
When embodying the invention in a preferred manner in a distributed call center, it is also possible to implement the recovery-time function, which is often used in a call center implemented with a conventional PBX. The recovery-time function allows a person working in a call center, for example, to have enough time to record an order, before receiving the next call. Several call centers also regularly carry out so-called outbound customer contact work, i.e., the agents of the call center also make calls themselves, so that the number of agents of the call center able to receive incoming telephone traffic varies continuously. The invention has preferred embodiments, which automatically make allowance for variations in the number of agents in a distributed call center.
The invention can also be applied to a virtual PBX so that the PBX operator is able to monitor the state of the virtual PBX connections in real time. When routing a call to a connection, the operator then knows if the connection is busy, if the person using the connection is off sick or travelling, if calls are being diverted to a mobile phone or voice mail, etc. This eliminates the unnecessary circulation of calls in the telephone network and protects callers from the irritation of long waits. In the embodiment, calls can also be prevented from circulating in the telephone network even if the person sought cannot be contacted. Known virtual PBXs also allow the operator to route a call, for example, to a connection in another town, which does not answer. In such cases, the caller has usually had to call the PBX again, because the operator has been unable to monitor or direct calls controlled by other exchanges. There are embodiments of the invention that can solve this problem too.